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Hello, I want to know why the districts have been removed from all of pages in question. All that was listed was "unhelpful", which is very subjective. It certainly may be helpful to someone who wants view this list and see the district they served in. If someone finds it unhelpful, then can just not look at that column. I do agree that out of all the columns, that would be the one I would remove if I had to, but there doesn't really seem to be a big enough reason to remove it, and it doesn't seem fair to take out accurate, related information just because it may be less important that the other information. Are you planning on removing it from List of living former members of the United States House of Representatives also? Rather than get into some edit war I wanted to address it here. I hope there's a better explanation and a consensus that it should be removed as opposed to a flimsy "unhelpful". More information does not always equal a better article, but in this case I think it does and I am opposed to the removal of it. Thanks. RoadView (talk) 17:50, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Moved to Talk:List of members of the United States House of Representatives who died in 2011#Include districts

Hello! In 2009 you fully protected Template:US_Constitution as a high-risk template. I'm not sure that it still meets that standard, and there is not much activity on the template or its talk page. Can you take a look at it and consider removing the protection? I'd like to make an edit and prefer not to go through the edit request mechanism. Thanks! Cmprince (talk) 14:19, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Blast from the past

My attention was drawn to one of my older talk archives because of the great {{ndash}}{{spaced ndash}} changeover that is clogging my watchlist, and no doubt yours. One of the threads dealt with a particularly tiresome topic on which we, and at least another editor, were united against one persistent one who managed to rope-a-dope us into submission. But we still ended up getting our way even after we both dropped the page from our watchlist. -Rrius (talk) 22:33, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Category:115th United States Congress

Category:115th United States Congress, which you created, has been nominated for discussion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Pichpich (talk) 23:10, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Category:United States federal healthcare legislation

Category:United States federal healthcare legislation, which you created, has been nominated for discussion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. KarlB (talk) 00:16, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

See talk

An explanation is requested at Talk:United_States_Senate_election_in_Massachusetts,_2012. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 16:21, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I added a new subsection that I think does a better job of conveying the same information. Thanks for being committed to a full record.Nevermore | Talk 17:51, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Polling

Have you seen what changes this editor has made to numerous articles polling pages: [1]. What do you think? I personally think it should be reverted, but wanted second opinion of where to go/proceed. Thank you!! America69 (talk) 20:28, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Glad to see we agree. It's over the top. Thank you! America69 (talk) 01:11, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Weigh in

Hey. Could you weigh in on this issue: [2]. I'm pretty sure intrade predictions do not belong on pages, and also, could you please explain to the user what an edit war is. Thank you! America69 (talk) 21:22, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Hello. User=Rxguy violated your WP:0RR on this page, and claims WP:CON was achieved via WP:NOTDEMOCRACY.[[3]] Take to dispute resolution? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Patriot1010 (talkcontribs) 19:32, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Ralph Hall

Hey, sorry for reverting your edit on Ralph Hall. I realized your version was better, and was about to re-add a corrected version of your table when you beat me to it. -LtNOWIS (talk) 20:23, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Template:United States listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:United States. Since you had some involvement with the Template:United States redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Kumioko (talk) 18:42, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Seniority vs. Class number

You said on my talk page that you changed some of the congress articles to list senators explicitly by seniority, but you seem to have changed the 81st Congress to list it by class number, rather than seniority. I think class number is a ridiculous order to list them in, because class number is something that is basically never used in any normal context. Having them listed by class number is better, I suppose than the previous situation, where they were not listed in any clear order - there were even some cases where the junior senator with the higher class number was listed first - but I think listing by seniority makes a lot more sense, because that's how senators are always referred to - "the senior senator from Alabama," or "the junior senator from New York." john k (talk) 15:34, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

  • Whoops. I blew it. I meant to say on your talk page that I ordered by class. The value of ordering by class is that it creates a parallel to the Representatives being ordered by District.—GoldRingChip 17:11, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
    • But classes aren't like districts. People talk about districts, and they're meaningful because they explain what part of the state the person is representing (although we admittedly don't do a very good job in our articles on districts explaining how they changed geographically over time). Classes are meaningless - they're just a convenient way of indicating which seat is which, but they're almost never used in practice - I'd be surprised if you can find any references in the mainstream media as to how this year the Class 1 senators are up for re-election, for example. It's useful to include the class number in the articles, but I don't think it should be the basis for ordering - especially since ordering the list is the only way we have to indicate who the senior and junior senators from each state are. john k (talk) 17:23, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
      • Very good point. I ordered them by class because numbers look so nice in order. But, as you say, they're meaningless. How about we open this up to a broader audience?—GoldRingChip 17:39, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for adding that extra category. Is there any particular reason, however, that you removed the results map from the infobox? Thanks, Tyrol5 [Talk] 19:08, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I'd have fixed it myself, but didn't know if it was a mistake or there was some issue I wasn't aware of. At any rate, thanks for fixing it! Regards, Tyrol5 [Talk] 23:53, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

you replaced Template:plainlist with a linebreak.

The documentation for Template:plainlist says:

"It uses proper HTML list markup, which is more standards-compliant and more accessible than separating list items with "linebreak"

seems to me plainlist is probably better, at least according to abve statement, or maybe just a matter of personal preference. Roseohioresident (talk) 20:27, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I noticed you recently removed the class column from the Senator birth/death lists due to them being "irrelevant". After putting the time in to make those lists, I would appreciate a little more than what appears to be 1 editor removing them based on their own opinion. I actually feel a little discouraged from doing future work because someone may go right in and remove part of it. If there is an agreed upon format somewhere or some full discussion about what should and should not be included in such articles on this topic then I feel stupid as I have not taken the time to find out. I don't want to be wasting my time making articles only to have some of it taken out. My personal opinion is although I can see why others may not be interested in the class and consider it to be the least important column on those lists, it's still related and not holding the article back by being there, especially for the few who may be looking for it. If I'm the only one who sees it like this, I can accept, but it's still frustrating to see entire columns removed out of the blue with minimal explanation for what appears to be the view of 1 person. I don't want to sound difficult, I just prefer to see removed content backed up with more than what I've already stated. Thanks. RoadView (talk) 14:59, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

  • It's not personal. Please don't be discouraged! Active editing is part of how Wikipedia flourishes. As an active editor and longtime administrator, I've seen many of my edits later changed. Please see Wikipedia:Ownership of articles and WP:Be Bold. As for the value of having Senate classes listed in an article about Senators who died, we could add all sorts of personal information about that Senator, such as hometown, religion, sex, marital status, burial details; or professional information: how succession was handled if they died in office, other offices held, etc.. But we have to have a reasonable limit that's pegged to the purpose of the article. Perhaps there's a purpose for classes being included, but it seemed to me to be a extra column of data that doesn't add anything to what a reader would want to know when they read the article. Does it matter that more class 3 Senators died that year? Is it curious that most of the deaths were Republicans? Wow- a lot of those people who died were elected in 1974! While I'm at it, I'm not sure that including districts in the Representatives' lists helps either. Districts change every decade, and knowing that Joe Bloggs was in california's 3rd district or 12th district adds nothing to this list. It's interesting to see that he was from California, but the district number seems superfluous. PLEASE don't mistake these points for the denigration of classes or districts elsewhere; it's just that in these lists about congressional births/deaths their classes/districts don't add enough to be worthy of inclusion. —GoldRingChip 17:16, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I understand all that, but it just seems like it's 1 opinion vs another and without any discourse, who's to say what is and isn't relevant. As for other columns that we don't use such as religion and hometown, it does seem irrelevant for things like that as the name of the article is about the senator/rep, which would include who they represented, and their birth/death dates. Their class is directly related to the reason they're on the list in the first place which is why I had it on there. I suppose I want to know where the line is drawn, do we really need to know their party or when they served either? Of course I think it's beneficial, but maybe others disagree. Also, for the representatives districts, we sort of had this same conversation a while back here but no one weighed in. I can maybe bring myself to not having the classes, but even acknowledging that the districts change every 10 years and such, I absolutely still think they enhance the article and find them to have appropriate value. RoadView (talk) 18:20, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

USPL template

I've made two notes on the USPL template, can you please check and reply there? A message on my talk page notifying when you've had a chance to do this, would be appreciated. Thanks, Dandv(talk|contribs) 09:49, 27 August 2012 (UTC).

"United States presidential election in XXXX, 2012"

Are all primary-related state articles being moved to the above title? Some have been moved while others have not. --Another Believer (Talk) 18:51, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

  • I suppose eventually, but it hasn't been my priority. It's preferable to the solitary primary articles. If you're game to do the mergers yourself, that would be great.—GoldRingChip 21:42, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Protection?

I think your semi-protection at United_States_Senate_election_in_Massachusetts,_2012 was highly inappropriate. You're the top contributor to that page, which makes you very WP:Involved. If the editing situation is so bad that the article requires protection until after the election, I'm fairly certain that another administrator who hasn't 171 edits to the page will protect it. Please undo the semi-protection. AniMate 18:57, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Excellent. I don't think vandalism has been much of a problem, though someone has targeted all of the articles edited by Hot Stop. AniMate 20:21, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Senate races

Hi there,

Was there a reason you changed the 2012, 2014 and 2016 senate pages from having them ordered by retiring/seeking re-election into purely alphabetical order, regardless of the incumbent? I looked on the talk pages but couldn't find any discussion of such a change and it always seemed to me that it made the most sense having them in that order.

Cheers,

Tiller54 (talk) 18:40, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Term expiration, March 3 vs. March 4

You might have a look at my Essay on this issue at User talk:Newyorkbrad#Term expiration March 3 vs 4. The essay should possibly be posted at a more visible place, since there has been some fabricated controversy about this for some time. Kraxler (talk) 02:11, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

please see above. Roseohioresident (talk) 20:07, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Why did you change the color?

Comment moved to Template talk:United States political party shading#Why did you change the color? per your talk editnotice. Please do respond, though. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 11:10, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Another comment there to respond to. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 16:43, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Primary Elections discussed in detail on general election pages

Something to ponder: We seem to have some variability with regard to how primary elections are handled on general election pages. Some include detailed breakdowns of the primary elections, some do not mention the primary elections at all, etc.

Since the primary elections are discussed with some granularity on Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2012 and Results of the Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012, might it be prudent to include a brief discussion of primaries within a state on that state's general election page, without results tables, then direct readers to the overall primaries page for further granularity? My concern is that multiple tables tend to run together and the primary results are really more or less tangential to the actual subject of the articles.

For example, here: United States presidential election in North Carolina, 2012, there is an in-depth discussion of the primary elections which is somewhat tangential to the primary subject of the article - the general election itself. Meanwhile, the general election results are not mentioned at all.

Before I made any edits to this page, I wanted to get your input / suggestions, and see if there is any extant sort of template for how this type of page should be constructed. Any input? Thanks Elcid89 (talk) 19:17, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

  • Basically every state has a two-part story on the election: the primary and general. In many cases, these are two separate stories. I prefer them to be combined into one article because in most cases the story of just primary or general election is insufficient to merit an article at all. Only in a very few states are both elections significant, namely (perhaps): Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Even in those few states, however, I don't think it hurts to combine the two stories into a single article. Therefore, I believe that we should limit theses articles to one per state, combining primary and general into single articles.—GoldRingChip 19:31, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
That makes sense to me. Building on that theme, is it advisable to include results tables for the primary elections? For example, I'm now seeing in my head a section for the primary elections and a section for the general elections, both with pertinent discussion (to the extent relevant) of the dynamics involved in each election along with results tables for each election. For example, we'd have a section for primary elections, under which there would be headers for both (where relevant) primaries and a results table for each election under its appropriate header. This would be followed by an independent section for the general election accompanied by a results table for that election.
Sorry, it was somewhat difficult to explain in words. I'm seeing something like:

I. Primary Elections

Democratic Primary
verbiage
Results Table
Republican Primary
verbiage
results table

II. General Election

verbiage
results table
Yes, that's it.—GoldRingChip 01:01, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Also, with regard to campaign websites, should we consider pruning those out, since they're somewhat less pertinent now and many of them will be deadlinks before long? Elcid89 (talk) 19:58, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Unless the link is actually dead, it should be retained for historical purposes. Now that I've said that, it may be useful even keeping the dead link just to say that the campaign used that url (even though now it's dead).—GoldRingChip 21:58, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
In retrospect, I agree. It makes sense to keep them. Should those all be at the bottom of the page under external links? The North Carolina page, for example, has them in the primary elections section, and I can see a justifiable rationale for them being in either place. Elcid89 (talk) 00:23, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Like you, I think either place is OK. So let's leave them where the original editors put them.—GoldRingChip 01:01, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Would you mind taking a look at this page United States presidential election in North Carolina, 2012 as an example of what we discussed above? Suggestions / improvements appreciated. I'm also not entirely sure about the infoboxes, specifically the one for the Republican primary. It's so large that it runs over multiple sections. I left it alone / made no changes to it. Thoughts? Thanks! Elcid89 (talk) 20:02, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi. You're the first Admin I could find who's around today. I have been going through all the U.S. Senators and Reps manually correcting the washpo parameters (the Washington Post changed their url layout recently and it must be done manually) and adding the ballot and rollcall parametrs to those which don't have them, and doing general cleanup of dead links and so forth. Rollcall has not yet been added to the template, so it simply doesn't appear on public view, but there are so many hundreds of these people I wanted to do this in one pass. It's part of the CQ re-org. They had Congress.org:

and now they also have Rollcall.com:

I didn't want to start a discussion on a holiday weekend right after the election, but we (the people in this Project) need to discuss those (do we want to display both, or display one and keep one as backup if they switch to charging for parts, as LegiStorm recently did) and perhaps this one which I found a day or two ago which has a lot of information, particularly on staff:

Cresix (who doesn't appear to have worked on this project before) has decided to delete ALL my updates without notifying me in any way. I happened to notice when I went back to check on something. I explained the situation and asked him to undo his hanges, but he became belligerant and refuses to do so. I have limited time, but as no one else is interested in correcting all these broken links I have been trying to do this when I can. I had done the 'contested seat' people before the election, and was now going through everyone, systematically state by state to ensure no one was missed. I wanted to finish because the lameduck session on the fiscal cliff might cause readers to want to know more, and broken links don't make a good impression.

Also, I noticed the Illinois delegation template was updatedfor the Jackson vacancy, but in the wrong sequence. He was 2nd district, but the vacancy was added to the end instead. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 16:51, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

What anon 184 didn't tell you is that the "rollcall" parameter is not part of the template, and when I asked how he/she knew it would be added, anon 184 refused to answer the question. I won't bother you with by repeatedly responding here if anon 184 wishes to argue with me here, but I suggest that anon 184 take a simple action that would resolve the problem: tell me (and the rest of Wikipedia) how he knows that the parameter that he has added to template in many articles will, in fact, be part of the template. If anon 184 can provide me with that information in a convincing way, I think this issue will be resolved. Cresix (talk) 16:58, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Can you two work this out?—GoldRingChip 19:25, 24 November 2012 (UTC)ß
Easily, if anon 184 will simply provide a satisfactory answer to my question: how does anon 184 know the "rollcall" parameter will be added to the template? I have suspended any more removals of his edits pending his response. Thanks for you reply, GoldRingChip. Cresix (talk) 19:40, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
I suggest leaving the parameter in. There is no harm in having an extra parameter. If there's a sufficient discussion on the talk page, an admin may (sooner or later) add it to the code. —GoldRingChip 21:05, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
I won't remove it from any more pages, although I think anon 184 needs to stop adding it until it is decided that the parameter will be included. And anon 184 needs to be held accountable and revert it in all of his previous edits if he doesn't take the initiative to have the parameter added. I have some concerns that he will not do so because he said he "didn't have time" to go through all of the pages twice. Anyway, thanks for your help. Cresix (talk) 21:46, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
You two deserve each other. Go ahead and celebrate getting rid of yet another volunteer. I've had it. 184.78.81.245 (talk) 11:42, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Congress session dates

I just noticed that the dates of the U.S. Congress sessions have disappeared from the infoboxes. Is there any explanation for it? Kraxler (talk) 14:24, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

It's a glitch; I'm trying to fix it. -Rrius (talk) 14:31, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Resolved
-Rrius (talk) 14:41, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Sandbox extras

Another editor moved Seniority in the United States Senate/Sandbox to Seniority in the 113th United States Senate. I cut-and-paste moved it to Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Congress/Senate seniority table sandbox since it should in no way be considered an article. I'm not sure if the history is worth saving, but there is text at Talk:Seniority in the 113th United States Senate. So here are the options as I see them:

  1. Fix the cut and paste to a pure move to Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Congress/Senate seniority table sandbox, then speedy Seniority in the United States Senate/Sandbox and Seniority in the 113th United States Senate.
  2. Fix the cut and paste, but move the material to Talk:Seniority in the United States Senate/Sandbox and copy or merge what is at Talk:Seniority in the 113th United States Senate to the main Talk:Seniority in the United States Senate, then speedy Seniority in the United States Senate/Sandbox and Seniority in the 113th United States Senate.
  3. Move Talk:Seniority in the 113th United States Senate to Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Congress/Senate seniority table sandbox, then speedy Seniority in the United States Senate/Sandbox and Seniority in the 113th United States Senate.

In either case, the mainspace articles need not exist going forward. -Rrius (talk) 16:25, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Never mind, it looks like Bearcat took care of it. -Rrius (talk) 16:26, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Again, glad I could help.  :)—GoldRingChip 17:29, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Kirk-Brown transition

Kirk didn't lose the election since he didn't run, but he did lose the seat as the result of the election. Still, I see your point. Your wording is fine. I looked up the MA law (Ch. 5, Sec. 140(f)), which states, "the person so appointed shall serve until the election and qualification of the person duly elected to fill the vacancy." Following that language, I suppose it could say "service ended" rather than "appointment ended." --RichardMathews (talk) 22:32, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello, GoldRingChip. You have new messages at GPHemsley's talk page.
Message added 02:18, 14 December 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

United States Senate special election in Massachusetts, 2013

Hi, did you really intended to create a page on mainspace with nothing other than a hidden comment? -- KTC (talk) 20:56, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

  • Weird, I know. But yes. That election isn't necessary yet because there hasn't formally been a vacancy. But there's a lot of valid news stories supporting polls, possible candidates, etc. So I created a sandbox instead of an article because an article would violate WP:Crystal ball. But then I also realized that maybe once the election does get called, then a future editor would have to recreate all the info I already had. So I created the article with just a note to find the sandbox. I wish I could have done it better. Any suggestions?—GoldRingChip 01:33, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
    • Not really. The page is technically a violation of WP:CSD#A3, making it a redirect to the sandbox R2, and a note on the talk page without an article G8... I guess it is possible for a link to be given in the deletion summary, which will show up to anyone navigating to the page for possible creation. KTC (talk) 02:05, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Saving congressional district maps

Since it is getting rather close to redistricting for the upcoming congress, I've tried a way to save the National Atlas maps for the historical record. Take a look at MA-1 and let me know if that works for you. I'll try to do others similarly as time allows....Pvmoutside (talk) 14:21, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Requesting assessment for Tulsi Gabbard

Hi! I left a note at the Assessments To Do list for WikiProject:U.S. Congress asking for an assessment for Tulsi Gabbard; I tried to assess it but I've never done an assessment before and would love for someone to check my work. Do you have time to help? Thanks! Sumana Harihareswara 23:21, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

District images

I thought about removing the images, but I thought it important to save the current maps first-then remove the maps, update the representatives, and update the districts all in one shot on the 3rd. I'm 3/4 done anyway.....Pvmoutside (talk) 20:41, 31 December 2012 (UTC)